After about 14 hours of gameplay I've completed my first Entropy 50 run, which is something similar to Heat in Hades or high Hell Pass run in OSFE.

I'm a BlazBlue fan, having put hundreds of hours into Calamity Trigger and Continuum Shift back near their release. My cats are named Ragna and Noel. But, this game has absolutely nothing to do with BlazBlue. If you want BlazBlue story, art, gameplay, or vibes, they aren't here. The tie-in ends at the character designs and voice actors.

This is also not a fighting game, and has nothing to do with fighting games. The reviewers that wanted more fighter mechanics musta been baited by the BB chars. I think Streets of Rage IV is cool if you want a fighter-ish beat 'em up, but really no side scroller I know of goes all in on fighting game complexity. It's too bad, and I want one too, but I'm not convinced this game is a "missed opportunity" in that regard, seeing as it's not even developed by Arcsys to begin with.

So, how is it as a stand alone action roguelite?

It's not perfect, but for me it's one of the best on the market. The combat and overall game feel are an easy 9/10 or higher. You can chain together pretty decent strings, with some amount of juggling and execution nerding. Combos can be extended with semi-customizable assists, and if you build for it you will be rewarded for things like knockdowns and wall bounces. I think it's the most fun I've had with side scroller execution since Dragon Crown's Elf.

How quickly it clicks for you will depend on character, so when you are selecting your first one, be sure to watch the in-game demo videos closely. I think you can't go wrong starting with Es or Noel, though I find myself playing Kokonoe the most. I don't know what characters are "best", these ones are just fun and feel good to me.

In a run, the two core upgrade mechanics for your character are "Potentials", which give new or upgraded command normals, and "Tactics", which are auxiliary buffs that enhance your normal attacks... things like adding Burn effects to normals or Ice spikes to your dash.

Overall you're given a decent bit of control over the Tactics upgrades you get and you might find yourself slotting comfortably into a few different build paradigms each run, but the subtleties of each element's gimmicks and how they mesh with each other in your combo strings keeps giving for awhile. There's enough depth here to create cool interactions. I've seen other reviewers complain about the rate at which you gain Potentials, but I haven't found it to be much of a problem personally. I sympathize with other reviewers that want more character complexity out the gate though, as it'd be nice to have fuller movesets.

The game's biggest problem is difficulty. It's just too easy for too long. As you play, you'll unlock more Entropy challenge options to make the run harder, and these should not be ignored. A few of them are key for making the game fun:

* Increase standard enemy HP
* Enhance the power of Elites in each phase
* Decrease healing from elites and rest areas
* Standard enemies deal more damage
* Standard enemies spawn more
* Some of the standard enemies attack faster

Those final two are huge fun upgrades. Probably around your 3rd or 4th run, you'll become painfully aware of how few enemies there are, and how freaking SLOW they are. It makes playing a character like Hakumen, who is built around countering, feel like a comedy routine. Enemies will walk around aimlessly in front of you for 5 seconds, do a 300 frame tell, then finally do some puny attack. Meanwhile Hakumen sits there trying to counter, but needs to refresh it since they're so slow.

With the Entropy cranked up, the pacing improves considerably, but it's not perfect. The roguelite meta progression rears its fugly head and allows you to outscale the entropy challenges. When you have fat character upgrades and strong "legacy tactics" (abilties you can copy over from previous runs), you can Perfect Clear many screens with relative ease even on higher entropy levels.

Roguelites are generally plagued with the ability to fail upwards. Over tuned meta progression is a serious problem. It means "number goes up" takes precedence over the player skill going up, and this is becoming very tiring in the genre. This game is deeply guilty of it; if you stay on the progression curve you will be stomping way too hard way too fast and it'll devolve into a casual button masher.

SO, I think it helps to play it more like a rogueLIKE, and forget about most of the meta progression. I was personally playing with a single legacy tactic, but if I could do it all over again, I'd ignore evotypes, remove the upgrades from my "Mind Crystals", deactive the Entropy buffs, and play a more vanilla character the whole time. This is how I will play moving forward. I think it'll help to avoid the progression buffs that give higher stats, use the ones that give more options.

This game gets the hard stuff right. It greatly rewards careful dodging, good character building, and well-executed combo strings. Once you're actually in a run with entropy turned up, it's all gravy. Just... I have to stress this. Try playing without the meta progression assists unless you really start to need 'em. It kinda sucks to have to do that type of thing, but games are for fun, and if ignoring some assist mechanics enhances fun, then I will gladly do it.

I wish there were a couple extra stages or some endless mode, but I suppose it's a good sign when you are wanting more content in a run.

Music is cool, story starts awesome but gets too predictable too fast. Japanese translation is pretty good, English translation is garbage for story, good enough for gameplay. Art and rendering are both great, lighting (both stage and effect) is a major highlight. Screen gets noisy sometimes depending on your build and the fight, but you can usually still track well enough to dash through attacks. I did turn down the effect intensity and screen shake to help with noise though.

Oh, also, that "last stage is randomly a dead cells ripoff" criticism I saw in another reviews is totally misguided, the ""metroidvania"" last stage exists to burn your timer on entropy runs if you didn't go quick enough in the main phase, and it feels nothing like dead cells.

Also, I'm a little sketched out by 91Act's weird behavior with the online mode, I can't tell if it actually works or not. I would avoid this game for co-op and maybe get it on sale, but it's still getting updates, so perhaps one day we'll get a great network update? Here's to hoping.

Flawed but also just really fun with great game feel.

BlazBlue game? No.
Good game? Yes, very much.

story got nothin' to do with blazblue but the gameplay is sick af lmao

This game's a mixed one for me. After getting used to it, I think the gameplay is plenty of fun. Some characters I find really enjoyable. There's cool combo mechanics in the game that you can build up, like weaving together various skills, jumps, or dashes to stay airborne. You might have things like "jumping resets your aerial attack limit" or "using this ability (which you get 3 uses of) resets your aerial attack limit" which lets you chain them together on bosses to stay in the air dodging for a long time. Boss fights can be really cool and feel like a sick anime battle.

The progression system is fine. I'd personally like a little bit more, but there's enough to keep things interesting for probably 50 hours or so. Any more game time is just honing your skills on higher difficulties it seems like.

You get the option to hold off on fighting the final boss to do a little bit of strengthening by running more rooms, but it just doesn't feel like there's enough imo. A lot of "tactics" which are basically trigger-based buffs to your character don't ever feel like I get to flush them out as much as I want to.

The main downside to this game was the insane barrier-to-entry. The game does a terrible job at explaining the systems in the game. I CONSTANTLY felt lost, and even now there's a couple things I don't quite get. "What's 'Exchange Point'? What's 'Potential'? What's an EVOTYPE? Is that just a character that I've built? Can I play that character again and get even stronger? What's a 'Tactic'? What qualifies as a 'Skill'?" All these questions, many more about the systems, and especially the characters and story felt SOOOOO hard to follow and understand. But if you can get past that, it's pretty neat. For those that were as lost as me, I'll explain some of the systems that I've learned.

AP - Pretty sure this is the out-of-run currency. The stuff that lets you power up universally before each run.

Room Selection - After each room you clear, you get a choice of about 2-3 rooms. The name of the room tells you what you get upon completion of that room. If you want exchange points, select the "Exchange Point" room, for example.

Exchange Points - This is your per-run currency. Each run it resets and you use them in the "Exchange" room to purchase buffs or upgrades to things. Having 350-400 at a time I've found very helpful.

Potential - These are character-based abilities. Some are passive, some are active. An example might be like "if you select this potential, then up + circle (on PS4 controller) does this fancy move" while others might be like "you know this move you already have? Now it breaks super armor!" I think these are the most valuable things to aim for in the game, with Exchange Points being 2nd. But I'm also a scrub so idk.

Skills - I still have no clue what constitutes a skill. At first I thought it was anything that used MP or SP (2 different in-run resources), but I'm thinking skills are just ones that use SP (maybe that stands for Skill Points?). It's definitely not just things that use MP though.

Tactics - These are trigger-based effects that are unique to each run. They are given from rooms that are named after the tactics theme (like Fire, Ice, Umbra, Light, Toxin, etc). You can only have 1 tactic per trigger type. There are 5 trigger types: On attack, On taking damage, On Dashing, On using a Legacy Ability, On taking damage. If you try to get 2 tactics of the same trigger type, one must be replaced.

Legacy Ability - When you finish a run, you can save certain characteristics of the character you just played. This saved version becomes an EVOTYPE. You don't get to play them again (except for 1 challenge that I've seen), but they're mainly there so that on a new run, you can choose 2 of those saved EVOTYPES to "inherit" tactics or these Legacy Abilities from. Say I finish a run with an EVOTYPE that has an ability that shoots rockets. I can inherit that rocket ability and a couple of tactics on another character when I start a new run. So you can kind of mix and match up to 2 of those saved EVOTYPES on each run to spice things up a little.


Overall, lots of fun, just can be very frustrating on the learning curve. Would recommend if you can get past that first learning curve. The anime battles are sick. Please make Reki a playable character Q_Q

BlazBlue Entropy Effect stands out as a game brimming with potential, even in its Early Access phase. Its strengths are undeniable, with a development team dedicated to regular and significant updates.

What’s Great:
Combat Mechanics: Reminiscent of classic fighting games, offering intuitive controls and a diverse character roster, each with a unique set of moves.
Visuals: Strikes a nostalgic chord with its 2D arcade-style graphics, boasting impressive detail and a powerful aesthetic.

Possible Improvement:
Roguelite Elements: The game could benefit from more distinctiveness in this area. My perspective on this may be a bit subjective, as I haven't explored many Roguelite games beyond Hades and Dead Cells. I envision a system where players can customize character movesets, adding depth and strategy to gameplay.

Looking Forward:
PvP Mode: The addition of PvP combat, both in duels and team-based formats, would be a fantastic expansion. Always excited to fight other players.

In all, BlazBlue Entropy Effect is a solid game with room to grow. Its blend of traditional fighting mechanics with innovative roguelike features makes it a standout title. Here's hoping for continuous improvement.

Rating: Highly Recommend

One of the most fun platforming rogue lite games I have played.
Very fun gameplay system, fast and responsive with combos and many skills. Character progression is very interesting where you inherit skills from one to another, giving an incentive to keep playing multiple runs and testing other characters.
Graphics are beautiful and very pleasing to look at, using the 2D sprites from the Blazblue games. It's quite impressive how all the move sets from the fighting game fit so well into a 2D metroidvania style gameplay system.

Each run is quite short, at a bit less than an hour, but I think it's ideal for a rogue game like this. Replay value is a key element in this game and I think playing online coop with friends must be very fun, but unfortunately I have no friends that want to play with me so I couldn't test the online aspect.

Blazblue Entropy effect is a very well executed game with replayability that is worth it. It gives incentives to the player to keep experimenting different choices, skills and characters while also inheriting a bit of progression to get stronger each run, so you never really lose all progress even if you fail to reach the end.

The idea of making a 2D platforming action game inspired by the fighting game was really good and I was impressed by how well the combo system and the animations also fit the genre.
I hope they are making money out of this game to make a new BlazBlue fighting game, because it's been a long time since the last one, and Entropy Effect shows that there's still a lot of fans of the franchise.

Totally recommended for Blazblue fans, metroidvania fans and roguelike fans. The asking price is good and the developers are still updating the game with new stuff.

The story is absolute GARBAGE but the combat is fun so who cares?

Now I want this, but Guilty Gear

U could make a fighting game out of this

BB Entropy Effect is an excellent blend of action roguelite and fighting games featuring incredibly satisfying combat and stellar animations.

The level of detail in the animations and character combos is so high you might think you're playing a traditional fighting game. This game will particularly resonate with BlazBlue enthusiasts — the core roster from the fighting series is present and each character's style and persona are accurately conveyed. Every character brings a unique playstyle and although I've only unlocked a few each one has offered a distinctly different gameplay experience. The game could benefit from more levels and characters yet it seems there's a solid foundation set for future expansions and I'm really hoping we'll see new levels, bosses, and characters.

It's addictively replayable thanks to the variety of characters and a game design that makes it hard to put down — I found myself playing way past midnight without even realizing it.
All in all, this is a remarkable debut from a small game studio that far exceeds expectations and leaves you craving more.